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infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the less
likely to succeed on that account.’
‘You have laid me under an obligation to you for life—
in two senses,’ said his late client, taking his hand.
‘I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my best
is as good as another man’s, I believe.’
It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, ‘Much
better,’ Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly,
but with the interested object of squeezing himself back
again.
‘You think so?’ said Mr. Stryver. ‘Well! you have been
present all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of
business, too.’
‘And as such,’ quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel
learned in the law had now shouldered back into the
group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of
it—‘as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up
this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie
looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn
out.’
‘Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry,’ said Stryver; ‘I have a
night’s work to do yet. Speak for yourself.’
‘I speak for myself,’ answered Mr. Lorry, ‘and for Mr.
Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and—Miss Lucie, do you not
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think I may speak for us all?’ He asked her the question
pointedly, and with a glance at her father.
His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very
curious look at Darnay: an intent look, deepening into a
frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear.
With this strange expression on him his thoughts had
wandered away.
‘My father,’ said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his.
He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.
‘Shall we go home, my father?’
With a long breath, he answered ‘Yes.’
The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed,
under the impression—which he himself had originated—
that he would not be released that night. The lights were
nearly all extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were
being closed with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place
was deserted until to-morrow morning’s interest of
gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should
repeople it. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay,
Lucie Manette passed into the open air. A hackney-coach
was called, and the father and daughter departed in it.
Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder
his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who
had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with
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any one of them, but who had been leaning against the
wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out
after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove
away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr.
Darnay stood upon the pavement.
‘So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr.
Darnay now?’
Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr.
Carton’s part in the day’s proceedings; nobody had known
of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in
appearance.
‘If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business
mind, when the business mind is divided between goodnatured
impulse and business appearances, you would be
amused, Mr. Darnay.’
Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, ‘You have
mentioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve
a House, are not our own masters. We have to think of
the House more than ourselves.’
‘I know, I know,’ rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly.
‘Don’t be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another,
I have no doubt: better, I dare say.’
‘And indeed, sir,’ pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him,
‘I really don’t know what you have to do with the matter.
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If you’ll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so,
I really don’t know that it is your business.’
‘Business! Bless you, I have no business,’ said Mr.
Carton.
‘It is a pity you have not, sir.’
‘I think so, too.’
‘If you had,’ pursued Mr. Lorry, ‘perhaps you would
attend to it.’
‘Lord love you, no!—I shouldn’t,’ said Mr. Carton.
‘Well, sir!’ cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his
indifference, ‘business is a very good thing, and a very
respectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints
and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young
gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance
for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless
you, sir! I hope you have been this day preserved for a
prosperous and happy life.—Chair there!’
Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the
barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried
off to Tellson’s. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did
not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to
Darnay:
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‘This is a strange chance that throws you and me
together. This must be a strange night to you, standing
alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?’
‘I hardly seem yet,’ returned Charles Darnay, ‘to belong
to this world again.’
‘I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were
pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak
faintly.’
‘I begin to think I AM faint.’
‘Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself,
while those numskulls were deliberating which world you
should belong to—this, or some other. Let me show you
the nearest tavern to dine well at.’
Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down
Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into
a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where
Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a
good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat
opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle
of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner
upon him.
‘Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial
scheme again, Mr. Darnay?’
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‘I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but
I am so far mended as to feel that.’
‘It must be an immense satisfaction!’
He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which
was a large one.
‘As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I
belong to it. It has no good in it for me—except wine like
this—nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that
particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike
in any particular, you and I.’
Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his
being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be
like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer;
finally, answered not at all.
‘Now your dinner is done,’ Carton presently said, ‘why
don’t you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don’t you give
your toast?’
‘What health? What toast?’
‘Why, it’s on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it
must be, I’ll swear it’s there.’
‘Miss Manette, then!’
‘Miss Manette, then!’
Looking his companion full in the face while he drank
the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against
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the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell,
and ordered in another.
‘That’s a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark,
Mr. Darnay!’ he said, ruing his new goblet.
A slight frown and a laconic ‘Yes,’ were the answer.
‘That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for
by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one’s life,
to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr.
Darnay?’
Again Darnay answered not a word.
‘She was mightily pleased to have your message, when
I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I
suppose she was.’
The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that
this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will,
assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the
dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it.
‘I neither want any thanks, nor merit any,’ was the
careless rejoinder. ‘It was nothing to do, in the first place;
and I don’t know why I did it, in the second. Mr. Darnay,
let me ask you a question.’
‘Willingly, and a small return for your good offices.’
‘Do you think I particularly like you?’
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‘Really, Mr. Carton,’ returned the other, oddly
disconcerted, ‘I have not asked myself the question.’
‘But ask yourself the question now.’
‘You have acted as if you do; but I don’t think you do.’
‘I don’t think I do,’ said Carton. ‘I begin to have a very
good opinion of your understanding.’
‘Nevertheless,’ pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell,
‘there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the
reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either
side.’
Carton rejoining, ‘Nothing in life!’ Darnay rang. ‘Do
you call the whole reckoning?’ said Carton. On his
answering in the affirmative, ‘Then bring me another pint
of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten.’
The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished
him good night. Without returning the wish, Carton rose
too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner,
and said, ‘A last word, Mr. Darnay: you think I am
drunk?’
‘I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton.’
‘Think? You know I have been drinking.’
‘Since I must say so, I know it.’
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‘Then you shall likewise know why. I am a
disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and
no man on earth cares for me.’
‘Much to be regretted. You might have used your
talents better.’
‘May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don’t let your
sober face elate you, however; you don’t know what it
may come to. Good night!’
When he was left alone, this strange being took up a
candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and
surveyed himself minutely in it.
‘Do you particularly like the man?’ he muttered, at his
own image; ‘why should you particularly like a man who
resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know
that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in
yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows
you what you have fallen away from, and what you might
have been! Change places with him, and would you have
been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and
commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on,
and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.’
He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it
all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his
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hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in
the candle dripping down upon him.
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V
The Jackal
Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard.
So very great is the improvement Time has brought about
in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of
wine and punch which one man would swallow in the
course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation
as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a
ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law
was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its
Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already
fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice,
behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in
the drier parts of the legal race.
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions,
Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower
staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and
Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially,
to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the
visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King’s
Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be
daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great
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sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank
garden-full of flaring companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr.
Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready,
and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the
essence from a heap of statements, which is among the
most striking and necessary of the advocate’s
accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement came
upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater
his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and
marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with
Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers’
ends in the morning.
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men,
was Stryver’s great ally. What the two drank together,
between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated
a king’s ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere,
but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets,
staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same
Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies
late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at
broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his
lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about,
among such as were interested in the matter, that although
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Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an
amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and
service to Stryver in that humble capacity.
‘Ten o’clock, sir,’ said the man at the tavern, whom he
had charged to wake him—‘ten o’clock, sir.’
‘WHAT’S the matter?’
‘Ten o’clock, sir.’
‘What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?’
‘Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.’
‘Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.’
After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the
man dexterously combated by stirring the fire
continuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on,
and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having
revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King’s
Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver
chambers.
The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these
conferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal
opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bedgown,
and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had
that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes,
which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from
the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be
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traced, under various disguises of Art, through the portraits
of every Drinking Age.
‘You are a little late, Memory,’ said Stryver.
‘About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour
later.’
They went into a dingy room lined with books and
littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A
kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the
wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon
it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.
‘You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney.’
‘Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the
day’s client; or seeing him dine—it’s all one!’
‘That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to
bear upon the identification. How did you come by it?
When did it strike you?’
‘I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I
thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow,
if I had had any luck.’
Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious
paunch.
‘You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to
work.’
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Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went
into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of
cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the
towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he
folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold,
sat down at the table, and said, ‘Now I am ready!’
‘Not much boiling down to be done to-night,
Memory,’ said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his
papers.
‘How much?’
‘Only two sets of them.’
‘Give me the worst first.’
‘There they are, Sydney. Fire away!’
The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa
on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at
his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of
it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both
resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a
different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his
hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally
flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with
knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his
eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his
glass—which often groped about, for a minute or more,
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before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times,
the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found
it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew.
From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned
with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can
describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his
anxious gravity.
At length the jackal had got together a compact repast
for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion
took it with care and caution, made his selections from it,
and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both.
When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands
in his waistband again, and lay down to mediate. The
jackal then invigorated himself with a bum for his throttle,
and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to
the collection of a second meal; this was administered to
the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until
the clocks struck three in the morning.
‘And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of
punch,’ said Mr. Stryver.
The jackal removed the towels from his head, which
had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered,
and complied.
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‘You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those
crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.’
‘I always am sound; am I not?’
‘I don’t gainsay it. What has roughened your temper?
Put some punch to it and smooth it again.’
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
‘The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,’
said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed
him in the present and the past, ‘the old seesaw Sydney.
Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and
now in despondency!’
‘Ah!’ returned the other, sighing: ‘yes! The same
Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for
other boys, and seldom did my own.
‘And why not?’
‘God knows. It was my way, I suppose.’
He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs
stretched out before him, looking at the fire.
‘Carton,’ said his friend, squaring himself at him with a
bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in
which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one
delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old
Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, ‘your way
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is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy
and purpose. Look at me.’
‘Oh, botheration!’ returned Sydney, with a lighter and
more good- humoured laugh, ‘don’t YOU be moral!’
‘How have I done what I have done?’ said Stryver;
‘how do I do what I do?’
‘Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But
it’s not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air,
about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always
in the front rank, and I was always behind.’
‘I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there,
was I?’
‘I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is
you were,’ said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they
both laughed.
‘Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since
Shrewsbury,’ pursued Carton, ‘you have fallen into your
rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were
fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking
up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that
we didn’t get much good of, you were always somewhere,
and I was always nowhere.’
‘And whose fault was that?’
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‘Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours.
You were always driving and riving and shouldering and
passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my
life but in rust and repose. It’s a gloomy thing, however,
to talk about one’s own past, with the day breaking. Turn
me in some other direction before I go.’
‘Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,’ said
Stryver, holding up his glass. ‘Are you turned in a pleasant
direction?’
Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.
‘Pretty witness,’ he muttered, looking down into his
glass. ‘I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night;
who’s your pretty witness?’
‘The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.’
‘SHE pretty?’
‘Is she not?’
‘No.’
‘Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole
Court!’
‘Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made
the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired
doll!’
‘Do you know, Sydney,’ said Mr. Stryver, looking at
him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his
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florid face: ‘do you know, I rather thought, at the time,
that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and
were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired
doll?’
‘Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll,
swoons within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it
without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the
beauty. And now I’ll have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.’
When his host followed him out on the staircase with a
candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly
looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out
of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky
overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a
lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round
and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand
had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance
had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this
man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw
for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage
of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In
the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from
which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in
which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that
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sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone.
Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw
himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its
pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight
than the man of good abilities and good emotions,
incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own
help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him,
and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
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VI
Hundreds of People
The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet
street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon
of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months
had roiled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to
the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis
Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell
where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After
several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had
become the Doctor’s friend, and the quiet street-corner
was the sunny part of his life.
On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards
Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit.
Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out,
before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; secondly,
because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to
be with them as the family friend, talking, reading,
looking out of window, and generally getting through the
day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little
shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the
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Doctor’s household pointed to that time as a likely time
for solving them.
A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor
lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way
through it, and the front windows of the Doctor’s
lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that
had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few
buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees
flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn
blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence,
country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom,
instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers
without a settlement; and there was many a good south
wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their
season.
The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in
the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot,
the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so
remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of
brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a
wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the
raging streets.
There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an
anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two
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floors of a large stiff house, where several callings
purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was
audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at
night. In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard
where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs
claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise
gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a
golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall—as if
he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar
conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a
lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim
coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house
below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray
workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a
stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard
across the courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant.
These, however, were only the exceptions required to
prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind
the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their
own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.
Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old
reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his
story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his
vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments,
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brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he
earned as much as he wanted.
These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry’s
knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the doorbell
of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine
Sunday afternoon.
‘Doctor Manette at home?’
Expected home.
‘Miss Lucie at home?’
Expected home.
‘Miss Pross at home?’
Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for
handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to
admission or denial of the fact.
‘As I am at home myself,’ said Mr. Lorry, ‘I’ll go
upstairs.’
Although the Doctor’s daughter had known nothing of
the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately
derived from it that ability to make much of little means,
which is one of its most useful and most agreeable
characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by
so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste
and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of
everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the
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least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and
contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands,
clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in
themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as
Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and
tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar
expression which he knew so well by this time, whether
he approved?
There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by
which they communicated being put open that the air
might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly
observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected
all around him, walked from one to another. The first was
the best room, and in it were Lucie’s birds, and flowers,
and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of watercolours;
the second was the Doctor’s consulting-room,
used also as the dining-room; the third, changingly
speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was
the Doctor’s bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the
disused shoemaker’s bench and tray of tools, much as it
had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the
wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.
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‘I wonder,’ said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking
about, ‘that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about
him!’
‘And why wonder at that?’ was the abrupt inquiry that
made him start.
It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman,
strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at
the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since
improved.
‘I should have thought—’ Mr. Lorry began.
‘Pooh! You’d have thought!’ said Miss Pross; and Mr.
Lorry left off.
‘How do you do?’ inquired that lady then—sharply,
and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.
‘I am pretty well, I thank you,’ answered Mr. Lorry,
with meekness; ‘how are you?’
‘Nothing to boast of,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Indeed?’
‘Ah! indeed!’ said Miss Pross. ‘I am very much put out
about my Ladybird.’
‘Indeed?’
‘For gracious sake say something else besides ‘indeed,’
or you’ll fidget me to death,’ said Miss Pross: whose
character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.
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‘Really, then?’ said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.
‘Really, is bad enough,’ returned Miss Pross, ‘but
better. Yes, I am very much put out.’
‘May I ask the cause?’
‘I don’t want dozens of people who are not at all
worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,’ said
Miss Pross.
‘DO dozens come for that purpose?’
‘Hundreds,’ said Miss Pross.
It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other
people before her time and since) that whenever her
original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could
think of.
‘I have lived with the darling—or the darling has lived
with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should
never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could
have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing—
since she was ten years old. And it’s really very hard,’ said
Miss Pross.
Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr.
Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself
as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.
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‘All sorts of people who are not in the least degree
worthy of the pet, are always turning up,’ said Miss Pross.
‘When you began it—‘
‘I began it, Miss Pross?’
‘Didn’t you? Who brought her father to life?’
‘Oh! If THAT was beginning it—’ said Mr. Lorry.
‘It wasn’t ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began
it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find
with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such
a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not
to be expected that anybody should be, under any
circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to
have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after
him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird’s
affections away from me.’
Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he
also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of
her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures—found
only among women—who will, for pure love and
admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when
they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to
accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough
to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own
sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that
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there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the
heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint,
he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive
arrangements made by his own mind—we all make such
arrangements, more or less— he stationed Miss Pross
much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies
immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who
had balances at Tellson’s.
‘There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of
Ladybird,’ said Miss Pross; ‘and that was my brother
Solomon, if he hadn’t made a mistake in life.’
Here again: Mr. Lorry’s inquiries into Miss Pross’s
personal history had established the fact that her brother
Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her
of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with,
and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with
no touch of compunction. Miss Pross’s fidelity of belief in
Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake)
was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its
weight in his good opinion of her.
‘As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are
both people of business,’ he said, when they had got back
to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly
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relations, ‘let me ask you—does the Doctor, in talking
with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?’
‘Never.’
‘And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?’
‘Ah!’ returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. ‘But I
don’t say he don’t refer to it within himself.’
‘Do you believe that he thinks of it much?’
‘I do,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Do you imagine—’ Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss
Pross took him up short with:
‘Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.’
‘I stand corrected; do you suppose—you go so far as to
suppose, sometimes?’
‘Now and then,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Do you suppose,’ Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing
twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, ‘that
Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved
through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so
oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?’
‘I don’t suppose anything about it but what Ladybird
tells me.’
‘And that is—?’
‘That she thinks he has.’
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‘Now don’t be angry at my asking all these questions;
because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a
woman of business.’
‘Dull?’ Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.
Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry
replied, ‘No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:—
Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably
innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is,
should never touch upon that question? I will not say with
me, though he had business relations with me many years
ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair
daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is
so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I
don’t approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but
out of zealous interest.’
‘Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad’s the
best, you’ll tell me,’ said Miss Pross, softened by the tone
of the apology, ‘he is afraid of the whole subject.’
‘Afraid?’
‘It’s plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It’s a
dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself
grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how
he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not
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losing himself again. That alone wouldn’t make the subject
pleasant, I should think.’
It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked
for. ‘True,’ said he, ‘and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a
doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good for
Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up
within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it
sometimes causes me that has led me to our present
confidence.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ said Miss Pross, shaking her head.
‘Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse.
Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or
no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night,
and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and
down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has
learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and
down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She
hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and
down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But
he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness,
to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In
silence they go walking up and down together, walking up
and down together, till her love and company have
brought him to himself.’
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